Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Success Story I have subscribed to The American Spectator for many years and have always enjoyed it. But lately it seems as though the magazine is providing even more useful...
...If the works now ascribed to him had appeared anonymously, Shakespeare of Stratford is exactly the sort of figure whom scholars would suspect of having written them...
...VEAL Chicago, Illinoisis to say, they were either part of a crisply functioning conspiracy that left behind no trace or hint of its existence, or they were utterly deceived by something that went on for decades right under their noses...
...government agents killed heavily armed people...
...It passed the Lautenberg amendment: a new gun control law which managed to violate both the Second Amendment, and the prohibition on ex post facto legislation...
...citizens, many of whom are far less qualified than the foreign applicants...
...The number of gun laws has become uncountable, and they're growing increasingly restrictive...
...In the past, the division was between the "sportsmen" and "Constitutionalists...
...or worse to be shot to death than to be burned to death while tied to a mattress...
...Shakespeare was not just a writer of genius...
...Strike two...
...E.T...
...Metaksa was proud of the NRA's role in supporting that miserable legislation...
...DAVID MOSHINSKY via the Internet Earned Income I am an avid reader of and subscriber to your magazine, but I must take issue with one part of James Bovard's piece "Carville's List" in the May 1997 issue...
...Rollins didn't put it this way, but a lot of us got the message clear and loud...
...As the public's support for gun rights diminishes, legislators are able to ignore the Bill of Rights with increasing impunity...
...If he'd gotten two thirds of gun owners' votes, he'd be president today...
...The bombing prompted Republicans to originate "anti-terrorism" legislation so hostile to civil liberties that the NRA and ACLU are now offering discounts for joint memberships...
...The bombing prompted Republicans to originate "anti-terrorism" legislation so hostile to civil liberties that the NRA and ACLU are now offering discounts for joint memberships...
...I have always admired Mr...
...Addiction is a terrible thing...
...Perhaps the biggest obstacle to effective outreach is the unchecked influence of the NRA's fundraisers, who make millions of dollars from the NRA...
...When all the sneering about Shakespeare's social position and lack of educational attainments has been duly aired, even a cursory reading of Shakespeare's life shows that the man from Stratford was in an ideal position as a playwright...
...but I would not be surprised by an FAA mandate to drain and vent empty fuel tanks to eliminate the potential hazard of explosive fuel vapor...
...Hoster argues convincingly that the "Shake-scene" of the pamphlet has nothing whatever to do with Shakespeare, but describes the actor-manager Edward Alleyn, who was known for his violent, scenery-shaking performances...
...Of course a lot of street level drug dealers have also been affected by it, but I haven't heard of any high level drug tycoons being caught by that law...
...If the EITC were abolished, my family might have to enter the underground economy or go bankrupt...
...There is no firearms freedom in the capital of our country or in most of our largest cities...
...While our U.S...
...JAY HOSTER Columbus, Ohio Tom Bethell replies: The ratio of sarcasm to knowledge is high, I'm afraid...
...On the other hand, some well publicized deaths are associated with attempts to lose weight...
...Bovard assails, quite rightly, the Earned Income Tax Credit program...
...As a connoisseur of that subculture, I am grateful to Tom Bethell for drawing my attention to Mr...
...Now, thanks to the ozone-destroying technology of computers, I can revel in your linguistic Valhalla while checking stock prices...
...Perched atop his own anachronism, he sees fit to accuse others of snobbery...
...Neal Knox, Harlon Carter, and others made the NRA an effective defensive force...
...Stop it now, please, and keep the change...
...The "historical" split in the NRA that Brock describes is just that—history...
...No hidden significance...
...The FICA tax is a stupendously regressive tax, especially on the self-employed...
...History is the revelation of human arrogance and it's inevitable carnage generated in response to the primordial temptation, "You shall be as Gods...
...In reply to Jim Becker: Macbeth was first published in the 1623 Folio, and no one knows when it was written, even if he thinks it was "obviously" intended to please James I. Its source was Holinshed's Chronicles (2nd ed., 1587...
...I won't take the time to demolish it (since it has already been done countless times in the last sixty years and I have a plane to catch), but merely point out the most glaring inaccuracy: "...no source material in the plays is indubitable post 1603...
...Ariel speaks of the "still-vex'd Bermoothes," but it is guesswork to claim this as an allusion to Bermuda...
...His book, discussed by Joseph Sobran in Alias Shakespeare, deserves a wider audience than it has received...
...Knox himself is fearful of the public, and his abusive behavior finally alienated too many Board members...
...Successful candidates will have at least passing familiarity with the "issues of the day," and be able to craft a persuasive sentence or two...
...It won't be Neal Knox...
...Then he states that weight gain does increase mortality...
...The reasons why there are so many "Red Chinese" in our U.S...
...Saddam made a speech and then TWA 800 went down does not establish cause and effect...
...DAVID F. PATE Palm Desert, California Weight a Minute Michael Fumento makes two admissions in his attempt to refute my letter about the dangers of dieting (Correspondence, TAS, April 1997) First, he admits most dieters gain back the lost weight...
...They did contain a significant quantity of fuel in a large empty volume...
...BRETT P. BELLMORE Capac, Michigan The NRA's internal feuds "may as well be the Republican world writ small...
...The fundraisers have enough influence to oppose programs that will not enrich them, either through promotion fees or from potential membership dues...
...After doing this daily for over five years, it's very obvious to me why there are so many foreign students in our graduate engineering programs: more of The American Spectator • July 1997 75 apocalyptic visions preclude a proper sense of despair over the moral entropy in modem civilization (Review of Arthur Herman's The Idea ofDecline in Western History, TAS, May1997...
...Knox himself is fearful of the public, and his abusive behavior finally alienated too many Board members...
...wrote Wladyslaw Pleszczynski...
...In a 1615 poem, "FB" (probably Beaumont) praises Shakespeare's lines but reveals nothing about his identity...
...Just priceless...
...At Waco, many of the people killed were indeed armed...
...Ask R. Emmett Tyrrell, David Brock, and Neal Knox...
...graduate engineering programs is that they are better qualified than our own graduates, and the U.S...
...Thanks to them, it's all the NRA can do to keep it's members from deserting the two party system...
...Although I believe O.J...
...Brock does not mention having ever attended a speech given by Mr...
...In Stratford it was often, though not uniformly, rendered as Shakspere...
...Obesity is the last politically correct target for abuse and discrimination...
...Reversing this trend requires an effective combination of legislative defense and public outreach, but the NRA is dumb and blind on the subject of outreach...
...The American people have abandoned the NRA because the NRA has abandoned them...
...Later, Sammy's mother Vicki Weaver was shot through the head by an FBI sniper, as she stood in the doorway of her home...
...Bethell supposes, how would contemporaries have been so easily fooled into believing that he had produced the Shakespearian canon...
...Bob Livingstone...
...But lately it seems as though the magazine is providing even more useful information...
...Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, died in June, 1604, probably of the plague...
...The only politician I know of who admitted as much was Bill Clinton...
...For example, in the New England Journal OfMedicine of September, 14 1995 this statement appears, "Men losing more than 4.5 kg had, independently of the level of weight at the baseline, and the confounders, a significantly elevated risk of death from noncardiovascular and noncancerous causes and from all causes...
...The NRA is financially supported by millions of members who believe in the inviolability of the Second Amendment: including myself...
...Bethell tries to turn against the "Stratfordians" the superficially inconvenient fact that the Earl of Oxford was dead before the first attestations to the existence of ten Shakespearian plays...
...4. Be a snob...
...Perhaps I have some standing to comment on this tragedy in that I am an Instrument Rated pilot with more than z,000 hours, a reader of Aviation Week magazine (the definitive aerospace trade journal), and I was a rocket scientist for more than thirty-one years...
...Fumento's work...
...The Tempest does contain an adaptation from Florio's translation of Montaigne (1603), and this is the latest indubitable source in all Shakespeare's work...
...The blue collars are not afraid to laugh in Schumer's face, and say, "In what part of the Second Amendment do you see the words 'sporting purpose,' dimbulb...
...Dole barely cleared half...
...Speaking the truth these days—about affirmative action, presidential corruption, Medicare, Anita Hill, or the Second Amendment—gets you branded a "radical extremist" who is "out of the mainstream...
...she is a housekeeper...
...Gun control law repeal attempts were canceled, and the NRA had as much trouble fighting off anti-gun measures in a Republican Congress, as we'd had in the Democratic one...
...or any other...
...Knox addressed a capacity crowd at the Camp Perry auditorium, and while speaking to the Marine, Army, and the civilian competitors, mentioned nary a word about Wayne or Marion or Tanya, nor engaged in Schumeresque pandering demagoguery, but in fact made a very well reasoned and rational argument for the need to vote intelligently in the upcoming November elections...
...Fumento also worried over people who took my advice...
...he was a writer who created plays that are still being staged four centuries after their original productions, and itwould be foolish to overlook his position as a longtime member of a highly successful acting company...
...No one would dream of suggesting that either of those organizations have anything but {{zero tolerance" for such actions...
...As you can imagine, having to pay that much money from such a meager income would destroy us financially...
...The contract was the excuse they used not to deliver on their promises to gun owners, until the Oklahoma City bombing gave them a new excuse...
...When the American political scene changed, and the proliferating welfare state began to discard individual accountability and individual liberties, one at a time, and the "civil liberties" organizations, such as the ACLU, were revealed as left-wing political action groups, the NRA filled the breach...
...The Tempest, too, was first published in 1623...
...Gun rights can be restored only with the broad support of the public, but the NRA's leaders have become phobic about the public...
...But he fails to address one of the most serious problems which the EITC relieves: the regressive FICA taxes imposed on self-employed individuals...
...Tomake matters worse, the Republican Party chose as its presidential candidate a man who was personally responsible for the passage of the Brady law, who conspired with anti-gunners to prevent a filibuster of the assault weapons ban, attempted to increase BATF funding after Waco, and refused to let pro-gun legislation be scheduled for votes in the Senate...
...is innocent, the horrible crime was committed by use of a knife...
...Diehl might profit from a reading of John B. Roberts's article in this issue...
...My italics.] The Tempest shipwreck in any event bears no specific resemblance to the one described by Strachey...
...His comment that the Stratford man's social position was ideal for writing plays is absurd...
...The number of gun laws has become uncountable, and they're growing increasingly restrictive...
...FRANK NATOLI Newton, New Jersey David Brock's article missed the mark in one respect...
...Think that didn't effect the election...
...citizens and the rest, in declining order of origin, to citizens of China, India, France, and several other countries...
...Sadly, the tenor of Brock's piece is that taking the Second Amendment seriously is extremism...
...Conservative Republicans promote crime bills and expanded police powers...
...Gun control law repeal attempts were canceled, and the NRA had as much trouble fighting off anti-gun measures in a Republican Congress, as we'd had in the Democratic one...
...but again, why not prohibit such offenders from owning knives...
...NRA members are elated by this coup because it reminds them of another former movie actor who helped to restore our liberties...
...in London it was more often Shakespeare...
...Fumento questioned my source for the double death rate associated with a 15 percent weight loss from dieting...
...Thanks to them, it's all the NRA can do to keep it's members from deserting the two party system...
...But enough...
...PAUL M. GEARY Pacifica, California David Brock writes "less politicized sportsmen, who join NRA primarily for the shooting sports activities it sponsors are more amenable to limited controls and restrictions...especially on...assault weapons...
...But when the NRA takes seriously "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed," "pragmatists" beat their breasts about the "purists," and coincidentally contract a case of historical amnesia regarding "militias" and the rationale at the time of enactment...
...no big deal...
...This is an excellent opportunity to break into journalism (our departing assistants are taking important newspaper jobs...
...Gilder's opportunity society somehow the appropriate model for the feudal world...
...The libertarians' dissatisfaction with LaPierre came when he apologized for calling BATF agents "jack-booted thugs," instead of saying, "President Clinton, the NRA supports police, but opposes abusive police conduct...
...I recently subscribed to Human Events to fill the void...
...Still love you, Spectator...
...Airliners are crammed with wiring and electrical devices operating at power levels quite capable of being such a source...
...It is the same source he touted in his rebuttal, the American Journal ofEpidemiology...
...Even with very careful and accurate accounting of expenses, we are forced to claim at least Siz,000 of that as our adjusted gross...
...Hoster thereby undermines one of the central props of conventional Shakespeare biography...
...Toss the Chafees, Jeffords, Leaches, D'Amato, and the whole Rockefeller Repuberals into the Atlantic Ocean, or have them change parties...
...Sammy had dropped his gun, and was running home, when he was fatally shot in the back by a Marshal...
...Not by Elizabethan Believing that the Earl of Oxford is the true author of Shakespeare's plays isn't quite as easy a task as Tom Bethell makes it out to be...
...The only politician I know of who admitted as much was Bill Clinton...
...Brock is absolutely incorrect and would appear to have spoken to few if any competitors...
...The vast amount of NRA money flowing through the hands of these people, and the minimal public oversight of their activities, creates suspicion of collusion with certain NRA leaders to undercut effective outreach programs...
...I enclose my address label which indicates that my subscription runs through August 1997...
...David Brock comes close to ghost writing for Sarah Brady when he asks if the NRA should allow "purism to yield to pragmatism...
...MARK A. MORITZ Chandler, Arizona them apply, and they are generally much better qualified than our U.S...
...Jeremy Rabkin's discussion of the federal government's unconstitutional takeover of crime prosecution was long over due...
...Then the NRA supported Lautenberg's legislation, which is obviously a misguided feminist thrust...
...Add to this fact the knowledge that it all goes to prop up the world's greatest Ponzi scheme, and it is a wonder that more people aren't joining the militias and getting into stand-offs with the FBI...
...Please keep it up...
...She did have a pistol in a holster, completely lawful under Idaho law, and she was not suspected or accused of any crimes...
...I waive disputing whether Mr...
...The fundraisers have enough influence to oppose programs that will not enrich them, either through promotion fees or from potential membership dues...
...In a discussion of NRA Executive Vice-President Wayne LaPierre's 1995 fund-raising letter which described rogue federal agents as "jack-booted thugs," Brock writes that the letter was sent "to attract new members after the Waco and Ruby Ridge incidents—in which U.S...
...Believe it or not some people still believe in principles...
...They draw freely on both in making their case...
...But consider the First Folio, which has Shakespeare's name trumpeted on the title page and his portrait on the frontispiece...
...Reversing this trend requires an effective combination of legislative defense and public outreach, but the NRA is dumb and blind on the subject of outreach...
...But, defensive strategies must eventually fail...
...These are entry-level positions, in which you will be responsible for assisting the editors in evaluating manuscripts, handling correspondence, checking facts and figures, proofreading copy from our reporters, and other fascinating tasks too numerous to mention here...
...Brock characterizes the best efforts of the NRA to preserve the Bill of Rights as "extreme," "an almost religious fervor" of "fundamentalists...
...At the NRA National Match Hi Power Rifle awards ceremony last year, Mr...
...The reference cited by Fumento was published after my study...
...The article illustrates that conservatives often join liberals in fearing real power in the hands of individuals...
...It follows logically from those two statements that dieting is a good way to die sooner...
...I am disappointed to see him join the food police...
...Now, like the Republicans, there are two divisions—between the conservatives and libertarians, and between the white collars and blue collars...
...degrees from both Cambridge and Oxford and wrote tripe...
...Bethell's evidence truly points to anybody's belief in the playwright's prior death, though it is WE WANT YOU...
...Academic credentialism does a poor job of accounting for literary achievement (as well as other things...
...While they're at it, they might want to repeal the Federal Income Tax...
...Mirroring the Republican/Democratic double standard on "civility," Sarah Brady can bray, "Tell the NRA to go to hell...
...You remember that one—it says that the moon is made of green cheese...
...Shakespeare's published works span three decades, from his narrative poem Venus and Adonis, published in London in 1593 by Richard Field (formerly of Stratford-on-Avon), to the First Folio of 1623...
...taxpayer supports thousands of foreign graduate students in engineering each year to the extent of $25,000 or more...
...The average Republican gets from two-thirds to three-fourth of the gun owners' vote...
...James Carville and Bill Clinton (and most Republican politicians) may believe that government really works, but the truth is that no government "success story" can survive any careful scrutiny...
...For example Lautenberg's law prohibiting persons convicted of misdemeanor spousal offenses to be ex post facto banned from owning firearms...
...EDWARD J. BAKER Flushing, New YorkReaganite Rollins I am still scratching my head in bewilderment for R. Emmett Tyrrell's unspecified attacks on Ed Rollins for his book Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms...
...William Strachey's letter describing the 1609 wreck, written in 1610, was not published until 1625...
...applicants often present GRE scores of 950-1100, most of the Chinese applicants have scores of 1250-400, and are much more qualified in advanced mathematics...
...Brock would be more gainfully employed on a sequel to his most recent opus, that damnable fragrant bouquet to Hillary Rodham Clinton...
...My research file overflows with photocopies of American Spectator articles...
...Conservative NRA members traditionally "support our local police and honor our brave men and women in uniform...
...There are numerous references, during Shakespeare's and the Earl of Oxford's joint lifetimes, to the former as the author of the plays, and there are no attributions to anyone else...
...The contract was the excuse they used not to deliver on their promises to gun owners, until the Oklahoma City bombing gave them a new excuse...
...That's why then-member George Bush received the letter...
...No doubt Mr...
...They are uncomfortable accepting the reality that the Second Amendment is not about target shooting...
...The center tanks were nominally empty but not dry...
...The spelling of Shakespeare's name went through various permutations...
...citizens...
...A doctor, a lawyer, or a magazine writermay well pay less tax than I do as a percentage of his income, due to the ceilings on the two types of tax which combine to form FICA...
...Thanks for all the good reading...
...Of these, about 35 percent go to U.S...
...Our combined income hovers around $2o,000 annually...
...It passed the Lautenberg amendment: a new gun control law which managed to violate both the Second Amendment, and the prohibition on ex post facto legislation...
...The Islamic terrorists are serious enough...
...Many ships were wrecked there before 1604 anyway, including one described by Richard Hakluyt and published in 1600...
...Just kidding...
...ROBERT V. CHIARENZELLI College of Engineering Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida The Idea of Regress In his comments on Robert Bork's SlouchingTowards Gomorrah, Stephen Chapman seems to believe that the decline of socialist ideology and the historical prevalence of Elementary Physics I think E.A...
...DAVID B. KOPEL Research Director Independence Institute Golden, Colorado David Brock's piece about troubles within the NRA continues the Spectator's tradition of capturing the essence of complex issues...
...3. Be prepared to perform leaps of logic that will make you the envy of the O.J.-is -innocent crowd...
...But, defensive strategies must eventually fail...
...NRA members are elated by this coup because it reminds them of another former movie actor who helped to restore our liberties...
...Bethell's enthusiasm for Joe Sobran's new book Alias Shakespeare: Solving the Greatest Literary Mystery of All Time...
...Now, like the Republicans, there are two divisions—between the conservatives and libertarians, and between the white collars and blue collars...
...For them an example of weak evidence is the lack of eulogies to Shakespeare at the time of his death in 1616...
...Shakespeare's contemporary Robert Greene had M.A...
...Since publication, even more have appeared...
...Worst Book of the Year," TAS, May 1997...
...For almost one century, the NRA was completely apolitical, engaging exclusively in firing range safety design and review, match coordination, and catering to the non-hardware needs of hunters...
...Will you or will you not join the NRA in condemning police misconduct...
...Once Dole had the nomination in his pocket, he came out of the closet, and admitted his support for gun control—ending the NRA's desperate attempts to make excuses for him...
...but the NRA must shuck and shuffle deferentially...
...As such, I feel that you have a responsibility not only to your conservative subscribers but to all who honor truth and objectivity, for these are the only weapons that can stem the anti-science, anti-intellectual ambitions of our elite journalists who would mold our opinions for us...
...Is there something fishy there...
...If you think you're ready for a challenging position with one of America's most talked-about magazines, send a résumé and a short writing sample to: AihericanSpeciator Attn: W. Arrington P.O...
...Box 549 Arlington, VA 22216-0549 12 July 1997 • The American Spectator worth noting that an unscrupulous publisher put out spurious "Shakespeare" poems as early as 1599, suggesting that Elizabethan forgers were unconcerned about contradiction by living authors...
...My experience rules out any real probability of a missile, and there has been no evidence of a bomb...
...In the September 15, 1992 issue, pages 68697, the following statement appears: "Subjects who lost 15 percent or more of their maximum body weight had over twice the mortality risk of those who lost less /1•1111^111^ 1111^111^11•11111 SARKES TARZIAN INC Sarkes Tarzian Television Sarkes Tarzian Radio Broadcasters Making a Difference 76 July 1997 • The American Spectator than 5...
...For those unclear on this issue, I recommend Stephen P. Halbrook's book, That Every Man be Armed, a legislative history of the Second Amendment...
...He repeats the misuse of the contrived term "assault weapons" and the association of the NRA with "militia groups" and even the Oklahoma City atrocity...
...On a less important matter, the NRA letter wasn't "to attract new members...
...He will get no argument from me on these two points...
...His argument, put succinctly, is that a number of people acted, between 1604 and 1616 (the date of the Stratford Shakespeare's death), as if the Shakespeare who wrote the plays were already dead...
...And what did this Congress elected by gun owners do, in its waning hours...
...DONALD R. WULFINGHOFF Wheaton, Maryland ...Kudos to Brock for admitting that gun owners gave the Republican party control of Congress in '94...
...Only in the prefatory material to the First Folio, which was dedicated to those leading patrons of the arts, the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery, do we find Shakespeare and Stratford linked...
...I only wish he'd pointed out how crime has been expanded by the federal government's War on Drugs...
...Gun rights were recognized explicitly by the Founders as the underpinning of all our rights...
...Consequently, as Mr...
...There is no firearms freedom in the capital of our country or in most of our largest cities...
...Bob Livingston, who represents Louisiana's first congressional districy, as "Rep...
...It would not have changed my conclusion, because it eliminated most of the age cohort...
...And James Bovard's "Carville's List" was typical of Bovard's ability to debunk even the most sacred government programs...
...libertarian Republicans worry about pesky details like the Fourth and Fifth Amendments...
...it is primarily about the right of citizens to shoot back at those police and soldiers if the government ever 74 July 1997 • The American Spectator the NRA is today the most important organization defending freedom in general, although it gives the parochial appearance of defending only the interests of gun owners...
...Had they unanimously banded together in a league to fool posterity...
...it is primarily about the right of citizens to shoot back at those police and soldiers if the government ever 74 July 1997 • The American Spectator the NRA is today the most important organization defending freedom in general, although it giveorders police and soldiers to shoot citizens...
...DONALD R. WULFINGHOFF Wheaton, Maryland ...Kudos to Brock for admitting that gun owners gave the Republican party control of Congress in '94...
...I personally don't want my taxes to be used for this purpose, but we don't seem to be able to enroll the requisite number of qualified U.S...
...1. Be sure that you love a good conspiracy theory...
...Unhappily, though, he seems to have imbibed the prevailing irrationalism, for his treatment of Shakespearian authorship is no better thought out than, say, the hypothesis that Aristotle stole his ideas from Egyptian manuscripts in the Library of Alexandria...
...It would appear 14 July I 9 9 7 • The American Spectator odd," as Sobran writes, "that he should suddenly stop reading in 1604...
...Second, Mr...
...The Constitutionalists took over in 1977, after the hunters and target shooters gave away the store in 1968...
...If he'd gotten two thirds of gun owners' votes, he'd be president today...
...The EITC is the only thing that saves us...
...applicants...
...That is the very point in contention...
...JIM BECKER Honolulu, Hawaii The last time that I read anything by Joseph Sobran, he was touting Gary Sick's "October Surprise" smear, so it's not too surprising to find him now enrolled in the (admittedly less harmful) legion of Shakespearian cranks...
...Gun rights have eroded steadily over the past seventy years...
...Is it now a sin to hold Ronald Reagan in the highest esteem...
...Bethell's strictures on the sorry state of American higher education...
...Once Dole had the nomination in his pocket, he came out of the closet, and admitted his support for gun control—ending the NRA's desperate attempts to make excuses for him...
...libertarian Republicans worry about pesky details like the Fourth and Fifth Amendments...
...Who will lead the NRA in the right direction...
...It is not applicable to the general population, since most of us are present or former smokers...
...The NRA's strategy has been to threaten legislators to keep anti-gun laws from passing, while ignoring the people who elect the legislators...
...Terrorism in Our Face" (TAS, April 1997) would have been a convincing article had it not been for the segment on TWA 800...
...The white collars want to be liked, and so continue the "nobody here but us sportsmen" charade, like Gingrich making nice with Jesse Jackson...
...They are uncomfortable accepting the reality that the Second Amendment is not about target shooting...
...Does that make Neil Knox the R. Emmett Tyrrell of Second Amendment rights...
...Sobran led him to forgo rigorous fact checking, so I won't belabor what any reader of TAS can discover for himself by casual resort to such works as Samuel Schoenbaum's William Shakespeare: A Compact Documentary Life...
...Ben Jon-son didn't go to college and was apprenticed as a bricklayer and yet, in the absence of Shakespeare, would now be universally acclaimed as the greatest playwright of the early seventeenth century (and, no doubt, be the object of someone's conspiracy theory...
...He repeats the misuse of the contrived term "assault weapons" and the association of the NRA with "militia groups" and even the Oklahoma City atrocity...
...The American people have abandoned the NRA because the NRA has abandoned them...
...Just kidding...
...David Brock writes "Neil Knox is...a great preacher to the converted but not at all effective in taking the case to the political center...
...To me, Rollins's book exposes the weaknesses and destructiveness of those in the Republican Party who have veered away from Reagan's clarity of purpose and vision...
...In his wordy letter, E.T...
...The careful scholar Sir Edmund Chambers would say only that this "or some other contemporary narrative .. probably furnished the hint of the plot...
...Horvath points out, the U.S...
...My wife and I are both self-employed...
...Brock characterizes the best efforts of the NRA to preserve the Bill of Rights as "extreme," "an almost religious fervor" of "fundamentalists...
...Some of these witnesses— Francis Beaumont and Ben Jonson, for instance—moved in the same theatrical circles as Shakespeare (who acted leading roles in at least two of Jonson's dramas) and might have noticed any inability to cope with the English language...
...to wit, that the caricature of William Shakespeare of Stratford as a semi-literate booby is utterly incongruous with the documented record of a middle class tradesman's son who, by age 28, was a sufficient power in the London theatrical world to be attacked by an embittered playwright (and apologized to by the attacker's literary executor), who managed the country's foremost theatrical troupe in his thirties, and who unmysteriously retired, having become a wealthy man, in his late forties...
...Published in London in 1592, this is the attack by the embittered playwright mentioned by Veal...
...Truth is eternal, not evolutionary, because it comes exclusively from God...
...Now I wonder who is Gary Sick's candidate for Shakespeare's mantle...
...Christopher Marlowe's surname was spelled in a far wider variety of ways, including one spelling—Marlinthat was used during his college years at Cambridge...
...students with an undergraduate degree in engineering are not motivated to attend graduate school full time for an advanced degree...
...DAVE OWEN Westminster, Colorado The American Spectator • July 1997 77...
...If George Bush as president had paid a little attention to making sure that federal law enforcement obeys the law, all of the federal agents and other persons who died at Ruby Ridge and Waco would probably still be alive today...
...HARRY BROWNE Franklin, Tennessee A Case of the Shakes I don't see how I can trust anything in The American Spectator again, after reading that foolish farrago on Shakespeare with which you led the May issue ("Outing Shakespeare," by Tom Bethell, TAS, May 1997...
...Instead, Republicans gave the credit to their Contract With America, and Newt Gingrich...
...Big Bang Theories One might suspect that David Brock gets paid by the word in that it took him eight pages to tell a very simple story, and worst of all, I'm confident the quarrel is not about money and power ("Wayne's World," TAS, May 1997...
...His cardinal error is to think that the 1590's can be viewed without distortion through the lens of the 1990's...
...The only thing she had in her hands was her infant daughter...
...Here's a brief guide for anyone who hopes to share Mr...
...Give me the Weinbergers, Cheneys, Armeys, Bonos, Santorums, Helmses, Grahams, Hutchisons, and Lotts...
...Perhaps he could pen an appeal to the Vatican to begin immediate beatification of the First Lady, whom Mr...
...Veal assumes what he ought to prove, that the "power in the London theatrical world" who was attacked "by an embittered playwright" was in fact Shakspere of Stratford...
...At the Board meeting on May 5, an anti-Knox coalition appeared to cut the Gordian knot by bringing in Charlton Heston to serve out the second year of Neal Knox's term as First Vice President...
...Going for the Gold" by Matthew Stevenson is the first article I've seen that brings some common sense to the issue of Switzerland and the World War II accounts...
...The cabin air conditioners had been working prior to departure and had heated the tanks andresidual fuel to a temperature where the fuel vapors would be an explosive mixture and easily set off by a minor ignition source...
...Yes, I really was...
...Don't let them marginalize the credibility of The American Spectator...
...The NRA supported enhanced penalties for criminal offenses in which a firearm was used, as though it is worse to be robbed under duress of a gun or by a knife at one's throat...
...assault rifle) national match competitor with a classification of expert, I know that Mr...
...NED MAY Howardsville, Virginia Rocket Science The American Spectator has been a powerful conservative voice in this era of liberal madness...
...And in citing Francis Beaumont, Veal again conflates what we know about the Stratford man and the existence of a poet called Shakespeare...
...At least one BATF agent later admitted in court that— in violation of BATF orders and the criminal law—he had begun firing wildly, rather than taking aimed shots at identified targets who were posing a threat...
...The Oxfordians find that the evidence for Shakespeare's authorship of the plays is either weak, or it's strong, but their conclusion always remains fixed...
...This approach reflects the personalities of the people running the NRA, and it is doomed to failure...
...Waiting a whole month for your insightful articles and sardonic reviews was, quite honestly, becoming impossible...
...Brock would never condemn as a "purist...
...The question is, if Shakespeare was an impostor, and if numerous marginal figures—an obscure poet named Barksted, the publishers of the 1609 edition of the Sonnets, the publishers under Shakespeare's name of plays that he didn't actually write, and, of course, the tens of thousands of people who didn't do anything special when the Stratford rentier died—were all in on the secret, why did none of them bother to say so...
...Strike one...
...DON DIEHL via the Internet The editors reply: Mr...
...5. When in doubt blame the professors who refuse to consider the notion that Oxford wrote Shakespeare's plays...
...As a regular reader of The American Spectator for over a dozen years, I'm as delighted as anyone to level a lance at political correctness on campus, but the Shakespearedidn't-write-Shakespeare's-plays argument makes about as much sense as the Verdant Lunar Fromage theory...
...JASON CAWLEY via the Internet Rep...
...How many burning crosses should the NAACP ignore, to avoid being overly "purist...
...I cite numerous studies to support my position in my book...
...Look what happened to Mario Lanza, Karen Carpenter, and Laird Cregar, all prominent dieters...
...Or is this just an example of the well-known Elizabethan reticence about spreading malicious rumors and unflattering gossip...
...As an NRA life member and service rifle (a.k.a...
...The letter was sent to raise money from existing members...
...Conservatives should recall that the United States was founded to overthrow the notions that power must be restricted to the government, or that people can remain free if they surrender their power...
...A large fraction of our honest citizens live under virtual gun prohibition...
...Perhaps the Earl of Oxford paid them to be silent, but Oxford died in 1604, and the loyal retainers were keeping up the pretense in private correspondence years later...
...Perhaps the biggest obstacle to effective outreach is the unchecked influence of the NRA's fundraisers, who make millions of dollars from the NRA...
...Talk about barriers to entrepreneurship...
...But as we see from his letter, Hoster remains a dutiful Stratfordian...
...This approach reflects the personalities of the people running the NRA, and it is doomed to failure...
...In the past, the division was between the "sportsmen" and "Constitutionalists...
...Horvath missed the point about why there are so many "Red Chinese" graduate students in physics and engineering in U.S...
...Think that didn't effect the election...
...Even with Oxford's death in 1604, the conspiracy—far from winding down its efforts—continued to labor on mightily in absolute secrecy, producing the world's greatest case of literary fraud in the publication of the First Folio nearly two decades later...
...graduate schools (Correspondence, TAS, May 1997...
...Both the LaPierre and Knox factions agree that "the Second Amendment isn't about duck hunting...
...The fact that Shakespeare died in Stratford, not in London, in an age when the news moved far more slowly than it does today, doesn't lower their expectations of what should have happened, and their carefully stage-managed dashed expectations are adduced in support of the theory that Shakespeare couldn't have written Shakespeare's plays...
...Both the LaPierre and Knox factions agree that "the Second Amendment isn't about duck hunting...
...A large fraction of our honest citizens live under virtual gun prohibition...
...For example, I recall reading an accident report where an antenna coupler starting a fire when a transmitter was keyed...
...And what did this Congress elected by gun owners do, in its waning hours...
...Livingston, I Presume Your May On the Prowl referred to Rep...
...He probably doesn't want to be associated with an unindicted felon, so please make a correction ASAP...
...But they must also change the FICA rules, preferably by privatizing the system or allowing me to opt out of it...
...Neal Knox, Harlon Carter, and others made the NRA an effective defensive force...
...But if Oxford is the author of the works of Shakespeare, all of those folks writing in praise of Shakespeare are either knaves or fools—which The American Spectator • July 1997 13 standards...
...Since he does not know what my advice is, he is ill advised to say that...
...Marshal's machine gun bullet had nearly severed his arm...
...We can only dream...
...The principal lesson of history is the conservative lesson...
...Rollins admits his own failures: Bush, Baker, Darman, and Kessler never have, just to name a few...
...The average Republican gets from two-thirds to three-fourth of the gun owners' vote...
...I don't think this experience is much different at the majority of other engineering schools...
...At the commencement of the BATF raid, Winston Blake, a British citizen, was shot through the head—a British coroner later found —by a highpower rifle bullet that had penetrated a wall...
...Enemy Sightings I was ecstatic to find that you now have a website...
...Leave aside Macbeth (1604), obviously written to please King James (Shakespeare was of course a member of the King's Men), and stick to The Tempest (first recorded performance November 1, 1611), based upon—even using some language from—a book about a 1609 shipwreck in the Bermudas, and published in 161o...
...Dole barely cleared half...
...Instead, let me note two flaws not of fact but of logic...
...Good God...
...As the public's support for gun rights diminishes, legislators are able to ignore the Bill of Rights with increasing impunity...
...But condescension is no substitute for scholarship...
...Our department offers about twenty-five new graduate research assistantships each year in ocean and civil engineering programs...
...BRETT P. BELLMORE Capac, Michigan The NRA's internal feuds "may as well be the Republican world writ small...
...2. Show an utter disregard for the way Elizabethans actually did things...
...Gentlemen, if you're concerned about retaining the support of the NRA, it isn't Neal Knox who should worry you, it's the leadership of the Republican Party...
...As detailed in my new book No More Wacos: What's Wrong with Federal Law Enforcement and How to Fix It, at Ruby Ridge, the first person killed by the government agents was Sammy Weaver, and he was about as unarmed as possible...
...Despite extensive publicity, mailings to undergraduate schools, and an excellent world-wide web home page, we get far too few applications to meet our needs from U.S...
...Conservative NRA members traditionally "support our local police and honor our brave men and women in uniform...
...But many were not...
...For those unclear on this issue, I recommend Stephen P. Halbrook's book, That Every Man be Armed, a legislative history of the Second Amendment...
...The NRA's strategy has been to threaten legislators to keep anti-gun laws from passing, while ignoring the people who elect the legislators...
...The memory of the Rodney King videotape was still fresh...
...Strike three...
...Gun rights can be restored only with the broad support of the public, but the NRA's leaders have become phobic about the public...
...The Stratford man, 39 years old in 1603, did not die until 1616...
...Tomake matters worse, the Republican Party chose as its presidential candidate a man who was personally responsible for the passage of the Brady law, who conspired with anti-gunners to prevent a filibuster of the assault weapons ban, attempted to increase BATF funding after Waco, and refused to let pro-gun legislation be scheduled for votes in the Senate...
...Libertarian NRA members view police and soldiers as necessary public servants who require close watching...
...At the Board meeting on May 5, an anti-Knox coalition appeared to cut the Gordian knot by bringing in Charlton Heston to serve out the second year of Neal Knox's term as First Vice President...
...Simpson's supporters hold that he was simultaneously the victim of (a) a highly efficient police conspiracy, and (b) grossly incompetent police and lab work...
...More generally, Randy Weaver's gun collection, while large by Washington, D.C., standards, was unremarkable for rural Idaho...
...However, it appears that the present management of the NRA have caught the Washington Syndrome of compromise and have in the interest of cordiality allowed the rights of the people to be slowly eroded away...
...I am an artist...
...A U.S...
...Sobran's effort, which has the merit of being only about one-third the length of the average somebody-else-wrote-Shakespeare-tome...
...Then it supported California's three strikes legislation and you get twenty-five years, under which the first person to be charged stole a bicycle...
...The "historical" split in the NRA that Brock describes is just that—history...
...For most of us that sure looks like strong evidence, but for the Oxfordians it merely serves as a sign that the conspiracy has been hard at work at its task of deception—which means, of course, that Shakespeare couldn't have written Shakespeare's plays...
...Montgomery was the Earl of Oxford's son in law...
...no secret codes...
...Bethell's friendship with Mr...
...Although he does not tell us, Jay Hoster is the author of Tiger's Heart, an excellent monograph on Greene's Groatsworth of Wit...
...I would like to see proof that the NRA is really entitled to credit for the right to carry laws being passed in numerous states, even though they are now on the bandwagon...
...The qualifications are fairly standard: a "B" average, a score of moo on the Graduate Record Exam, and the desire for an advanced degree in engineering...
...Why not start with the facts and work from there...
...Unlike other writers of the day, who sold their plays outright to an acting company and lost all control over the material, Shakespeare was a sharer (what we would call a general partner) in the Lord Chamberlain's men and the owner of a one-tenth share of the Globe...
...The article illustrates that conservatives often join liberals in fearing real power in the hands of individuals...
...Gun rights were recognized explicitly by the Founders as the underpinning of all our rights...
...Gentlemen, if you're concerned about retaining the support of the NRA, it isn't Neal Knox who should worry you, it's the leadership of the Republican Party...
...The Constitutionalists took over in 1977, after the hunters and target shooters gave away the store in 1968...
...If the Republican Congress wants to do away with the EITC, I support them fully in their efforts...
...It may be that we will never definitively understand the cause of this tragedy...
...JAMES SCHLUETER via the Internet I just thought I'd drop you a line to tell you how much I enjoy the "enemy of the week" feature on your website...
...And this lesson is that progress does not and cannot exist...
...Keep in mind that all this occurred when the newspapers were filled with stories about Mark Fuhrman, and the New York cops who "honored" their fallen comrades with a drunken melee at a Washington hotel...
...What is lacking in his understanding is that history is not comprised of evolutionary experiments where man progressively "reinvents" himself and must, therefore, be forgiven for making a few mistakes along the way...
...Blake, unarmed, had been sitting at a table, eating a breakfast roll...
...Conservatives should recall that the United States was founded to overthrow the notions that power must be restricted to the government, or that people can remain free if they surrender their power...
...I made similar points in my book Things You Know That Are Not So: A Digest of Erroneous Popular Wisdom on History, Science, Health 6 More...
...Excuse me, before the NRA implodes, I must button up, snug my sling, and (Continued on page 73) The American Spectator • July 2 9 9 7 15 Correspondence (Continued from page is) attend one final call of "ready on the right, ready on the left, ready on the firing line...
...And finally...
...Instead, Republicans gave the credit to their Contract With America, and Newt Gingrich...
...Gun rights have eroded steadily over the past seventy years...
...It won't be Neal Knox...
...How many swastikas should B'nai B'rith tolerate, for the sake of "pragmatism...
...I do concur heartily with Mr...
...I am responsible for one of the engineering departments at my university to correspond with graduate applicants, screen their applications, recommend them for admission based on qualifications, recommend them for award of research assistantships, and develop sources of qualified applicants...
...Knox...
...wrote Wladyslaw Pleszczynski...
...Sadly, the tenor of Brock's piece is that taking the Second Amendment seriously is extremism...
...First, if the Stratford Shakespeare had really dribbled at the mouth in the way that Mr...
...Conservative Republicans promote crime bills and expanded police powers...
...Shakespeare was lionized in the Elizabethan literary world, most notably by Francis Meres in Palladis Tamia (1598) and in Ben Jonson's prefatory poem to the First Folio...
...The American Spectator is seeking two smart, well-read, conscientious people to become our newest editorial assistants...
...Our FICA obligation on that amount is 15.3 percent, which comes to almost $2,000...
...Who will lead the NRA in the right direction...
...Anyone who believes that Shakespeare's position as an ambitious theatrical professional disqualifies him as the author of the plays should go back and read George Gilder's The Spirit of Enterprise, this time more carefully...
...The vast amount of NRA money flowing through the hands of these people, and the minimal public oversight of their activities, creates suspicion of collusion with certain NRA leaders to undercut effective outreach programs...
...The May issue, which I have just read, contains several unusual and valuable articles...
...What makes the failings of the NRA a matter of concern to every American is that the NRA is today the most important organization defending freedom in general, although it gives the parochial appearance of defending only the interests of gun owners...
Vol. 30 • July 1997 • No. 7
